Any of you ever had problems of trying to gauge how much pasta to cook? Or am I the only one? Here's the thing...too little, you get too much
sauce leftover. Too much, you have pasta going to waste. Perhaps it is time I
invest in a pasta measurer.

(Next)
10 min : I stared at the Italian sausages.

Recipe
says ‘With a sharp knife, slit the sausage skins lengthways
and pop all the meat out. Using wet hands, roll little balls of sausage meat
about the size of large marbles and place them to one side.’

Firstly, I
have never thought that I could actually make use of those sausages that we get
from the Deli and make them into meatballs.

Then, I
was questioning if the sausage skins were that easy to slit. How much pressure
do I have to use?

It
was like an Eureka moment for me!What a great way of making meatballs. The sausages
were already pre-mix with herbs and best of all, it stays together easily. The
ball making was really easy and fun!

See
the before picture and after pic of the Italian Sauages. ﻿﻿

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

BEFORE = I AM A SAUSAGE

AFTER = I AM A MEATBALL

(Next)
30 min :

The cooking process started. I followed the step by step guide provided
in the recipe. Some learnings to look out for in future:

1.Never grate the lemon beyond the yellow part
of the lemon peel (skin) as the white inner part is actually bitter.

2.When I tossed the cooked pasta into the egg mixture
directly, it did not thicken as described in the recipe. So, I had to heat up
the pan. Only then it helped to thicken the mixture well.

3.The Italian sausages/ meatballs should not be
fried in the pan for too long as they become hard. My mistake was that I was
afraid they were not cooked and I usually like my meat well done. Hence, the meatballs were not as juicy as it should be.

The
Result:

Overall,
the pasta was quite yummy. The taste of the lemon zest was a perfect touch to
the salty cheese mix and cream. The lemon also provided an amazing bitter sweet
fragrance to the sauce and dish.

Attaching Jamie's Sausage Carbonara below:

Ahem...I
did replace linguini with angel eye pasta and pancetta with mushrooms. Figured
too much meat.

But linguini does make the dish look 'sexier' and the pancetta added colors to the dish which is definitely lacking in mine.

FUN FACTS: Did you know?The word carbonara is derived from the Italian
word for charcoal, and its origins are as a sauce served with pasta to the coal
miners in Italy in the mid-1900’s.